Giving Compass' Take:

• Arne Duncan shares lessons he learned from his time in education that range from the importance of early childhood education to why educators must be collaborative. 

• One of the lessons Duncan discusses is the differences between equal and equitable opportunities for students. He points out that allowing students equal access to the same schools and same teachers does not mean that all students will succeed equally.  Education equity means that "students get what they need to fulfill their own unique talents."

• Read about some ideas on how to achieve educational equity through policy change. 

I’ve been in education my whole life: My mother set up a tutoring program for kids in our Chicago neighborhood. Eventually, I was in charge of Chicago’s 600 schools. Then my friend, Barack Obama, became President of the United States and he asked me to develop an education strategy for the country.

Now I’m back in my old Chicago neighborhood, and in some ways, it’s worse: Of the young men I deal with, very few have high school diplomas. None have graduated from college. And many have already done jail time, even though they are heartbreakingly young.

Here are six lessons that those experiences have taught me.

  1. The single best investment we can make is in high-quality early childhood education. University of Chicago Nobel laureate in education, James Heckman, found that there’s a seven-to-one return on investment for money spent in early childhood education.
  2.  Poverty is not destiny.  But data on student achievement from the OECD shows huge variations in how children from disadvantaged backgrounds perform. There’s tremendous variation across countries, between states and even within single schools.
  3.  Equal is not equitable. If we try to “close the achievement gap” by giving every child the same access to resources, the same teachers—we will not be equitable.
  4. Teachers matter deeply. I’ve learned a lot about teachers. But here are a few salient points: Teachers change lives. Teachers are the most important factor in a student’s school experience.
  5. The “job” of our children’s generation will be learning. The next generation of learners won’t go looking for “jobs”—they will create jobs.
  6. We get to choose when to compete—and when to collaborate. While it may be appropriate for countries to compete in the Olympic arena or in the business marketplace, education is something that we must collaborate on.

Read the full article about lessons in education by Arne Duncan at EdSurge